Relationship Between Education and Psychology
Ever wondered what the relationship is between education and psychology, or more importantly are there any? There is a positive and direct relationship between psychology and educational psychology and this is often not known to people. The education that you get from your childhood is one of the most important building factors and it shapes your psychology.
The intimate relationship shared by education and psychology often manifests itself in a lot of different ways. Both are inseparable. While psychology is all about the study of human behaviour, education is the key component to modifying human behaviour.
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Multifaceted Relationship Shared Between Education and Psychology
As one might deduce, when it comes to the relationship shared between education and psychology, in most cases, it is multi-dimensional. There are several components of education that frame your psychology and vice-versa. Some of the major factors include:
Child-Centric Learning
When we talk about education, the first thing that crosses our mind is the important education that our children get from schools and similar institutions. Psychology often has an important role to play here. More precisely, it is IQ that plays a crucial role. Psychology helps one to prepare a plan based on the capabilities and the needs of the child.
One can follow that education plan to gain more insights and the child will be able to learn more and that too easily. Even the preparation of the curriculum or syllabus according to each class is based on how much the child will be able to grasp in each class.
For eg Calculus as a subject is always set up for students who have passed at least class 9. This is because their IQ will be more developed compared to children who have not yet passed class 9.
Outlook towards The World
Education and psychology are closely related when it comes to shaping an individual's outlook on the world and their perspective. How? You will often notice that an individual who has an education will be open to newer changes and will have the eagerness to shape more quickly. This is because education often teaches you to widen your horizons more and shape your perspective in a more inclusive way.
This however does mean that individuals who do not have formal education have a stunted psychology or faulty parameters. However, it is education and the guidance that comes with it which allows individuals to have a more open outlook towards the world.
Cognitive Development
A very important part of our psychological development is cognitive development. This ensures that as an individual, you have the right growth and maturation. It usually focuses on the development of abilities like critical thinking, reasoning, judgement and similar others. Education ensures that one is able to develop critical thinking skills. It also helps individuals to analyse information and understand how to arrive at a particular solution for a problem.
Not only that, education also helps in knowledge acquisition and this cannot happen without the psychological mechanisms. For knowledge to develop across various fields, you will need to have developed processes like segmentation, critical analysis and similar others.
Motivation and Goal Setting
It is possible that there are differences between psychology and education. However, in most cases, the relationship is more overpowering than the minute differences. Motivation and goal setting are extremely important topics. It could be intrinsic motivation or even goal orientation. It is none other than education which is able to instil these psychological concepts.
It is education that helps one to set up small realistic goals and work towards them so that one can achieve them easily. Without education, such important psychological concepts would remain a distant purview and not a practical skill to develop.
Individual Identity
The most important psychological concept for an individual is the formation of identity. It is a cumulative concept and does not mean only professional or personal identity. Identity usually has different concepts like self-identity, gender identity and similar others. Without education, identity formation is extremely tricky.
Most often in a lot of cases, you will see that lack of proper education often results in an individual developing a faulty identity. On the other hand, if education is passed on in the right way, in most cases it acts as a great aid. This is major because education can deeply change an individual's psyche and it can completely transform the wants and aspirations of life.
Is the Relationship Between Education and Psychology Always Positive?
It is true that in most cases the relationship between education and psychology is deemed to be positive. However, there are instances when it could have a negative connotation as well. For example, there are educational institutions that are not always high on positivity and from such environments, individuals can pick up a faulty psyche. If the educational environment has stereotypes and biases, then the individual will also pick up the same cues. Mismatched learning styles often have a direct negative impact on such environments.
Not only that, education can often lead to unhealthy competition as well where students are often more focused on outperforming each other rather than just learning. This often leads to a negative psyche that does not boost optimum and desired psychological development.
Finally, another very common negative relationship between education and psychology is the high build-up of stress and anxiety. Often education overload can lead to the development of stress and anxiety which deters psychological development and often it is more harmful as well.
Education and psychology are very important concepts and the most unique thing is that they are dependent on each other in most instances. While psychology is the study of understanding human behaviour and responses, it is education that shapes each of the behaviours. Since its inception, there has been a lot of research aimed an aim to understanding and establishing a concrete relationship between education and psychology. Educational experiences can completely change your psychology and in most cases, this change is positive in nature.
